Spring-energized or driven lancets of many and varied structual arrangements have been employed extensively to replace needles and hand-carried needle-like probes for piercing the skin, particularly the finger, to provide blood samples for examination and clinical testing. While these "automated" lancets have provided some inprovement and an enhanced degree of control in the procedures involved, the mechanisms themselves have disadvantages and objectionable features.
The relative complexity of some devices has contributed to these difficulties and has made the devices expensive in manufacture as well as unreliable in use. Excessive numbers of springs, plunger elements and other interrelated operating components have rendered many of the automated lancet assembles unduly complex. Others of prior art lancets are foreboding in their visual appearance and give rise to undue concern on the part of the patient.
It is, accordingly, a principal aim of the present invention to provide an automatic lancet having minimum physical components, and which is relatively simple in construction, uninhibiting in appearance, and which exhibits an enhanced simplicity and is reliable in use. The lancet of the present invention obviates many of the shortcomings and objectionable features of prior art devices.